It took longer for me to get into the door of the facility than to cut up the catch and clean up my portion of the work area. It would have been quicker and easier to fillet the fish on my boat—but I couldn’t.
In Ohio, cleaning on board a boat is illegal, but it’s okay in most parking lots.
I wheeled a stuffed cooler up to the fish cleaning station after a g reat morning on the lake. Now the work begins, eh? No, now the wait began. Our crew of happy anglers weren’t the only ones with a big cooler full of fish. It took longer for me to get into the door of the facility than to cut up the catch and clean up my portion of the work area. It would have been quicker and easier to fillet the fish on my boat—but I couldn’t.
It was early, early spring, but my partners and I had taken advantage of a warmer than usual day and hit a couple of warm water discharges where cohos and browns were seeking refuge from the near-freezing lake water. The fish found comfortable conditions and a belly-full of baitfish also concentrated in the warmed water. The fish also found some of our lures and a quick trip into our fish cooler.
What we found when we got back to the marina was a roped off fish cleaning station with the water pipes and drains dismantled for the winter. No problem, I set my portable fish cleaning table on the back deck of the boat and cleaned the fish before I even put my boat back on the trailer.
At the end of another trip, in another place, there was no cleaning station at the harbor so fish were left in the cooler while the boat was trailered and hauled back to the AirBnB we’d rented and the fish were cleaned in the backyard. It was the same boat, but each outing took place in a different state with different rules regarding the slicing and dicing of recreationally caught fish.
What is allowed where you fish? Are you sure? Do you know the law or do you just think you know what’s legally allowed or improper? What I know is there’s plenty of confusion.
I monitor several sites on Facebook to keep up with what’s biting and where and other information. Discussions of fish cleaning strategies often come up. It’s interesting to track the conflicting comments discussing what’s permitted and what’s illegal—at least in the minds of the people posting—and often from people from the same state and using the same marinas.
This 20 ¼” coho’s length didn’t change when the fish was filleted.
That’s why I don’t rely on Facebook for up-to-date information about what’s legal and what’s out of bounds when it comes to fish and fishing laws. I probably know the laws here in Indiana, my home state, as well as any of the Conservation Officers I might encounter. Once I cross the state line—or several state lines—to fish in an-other state or province, I never assume the laws will be the same as back home. Some are, some aren’t and, at least to me, some are just plain crazy.
When I’m heading on a road trip and want to learn the fishing regulations for that area, the first thing I do is check for that state’s rules. These sources of fishing rules info are good, but not perfect—especially when it comes to the rights and wrongs of cleaning fish.
The definitive “rules” about fishing, fish cleaning and other outdoor activities are detailed in current editions of state statutes and regulatory listings—often referred to as “codes.” Statutes are passed by legislatures, codes are written by regulatory agencies—and all of them tend to be written in that strange corruption of the English language called “Legalese.”
In the fishing regs guidebook you pick-up at Walmart or see on a DNR website, the legalese is mostly translated back into plain English. However, it’s not unusual for something to be lost in translation or just skipped over. Somewhere in the booklet or on the website will be a disclaimer that the contents are neither a complete listing of all fishing laws nor are they the exact wording of the law. They are a synopsis.
I hoped to make this article simple by contacting a knowledgeable person from each Great Lake state and Ontario to ask a few simple questions about cleaning fish caught from the Great Lakes. Some respondents explained things in depth, others just referred to their code or their regulations guide. I got no response from Illinois.
Where legal, many boaters outfit their boats with fish-cleaning gear.
Here are the questions I asked—specifically about boats/fish/fishermen in the Great Lakes:
- Is it ever legal to clean a fish in a boat while the boat is floating? (This includes boats that are moored, underway or some specific distance offshore.)
- If a fish can legally be cleaned while on a boat, what about the “remains”—heads, skin, offal, skeleton? a) Must the offal be retained and dis-posed (properly) on land? b) Can offal be deposited into the lake?
- Are there other regulations that might be pertinent to fish cleaning?
Question #1: In Ohio the answer is no. The official response said: “No, sport fish may never be cleaned while on the water in Ohio. The regulations state: It shall be unlawful for any person to possess a fish in any form or condition other than in the round while on or when unloading the fish from a boat, while wading, while fishing from shore, or while on any waters in this state where a fishing license is required.”
So cleaning on a boat is out, period, and I guess if you are shore fishing, you should have all your fishing gear stowed before cutting into the fish. The exception to the Ohio rule is: “Forage fish, rough fish, and game fish that do not have a possession or length limit may be cut up and used for bait provided that the skin or head of the fish being used is intact so that the species is visually identifiable.” I guess, since there’s a catch limit on perch, the time-worn tactic of using perch eyes or belly meat as bait to catch more perch is illegal.
Question #1: In New York (fresh water), any legally harvested fish may be gilled or gutted while on the water. Some species of fish can be filleted as long as the skin is left on the fillets. The fish that can NOT be filleted on a boat are walleye, black bass, brook trout, lake trout and Atlantic salmon. The New York code reads, “Possession of walleye, bass, brook or lake trout or Atlantic salmon that have been cut, dismembered, filleted, skinned, or otherwise altered so that the species and total length of such fish cannot be easily determined is prohibited.”
What’s unclear to me is if the “prohibited” process is cutting or altering, period; or if any knife work that makes it hard to determine the species or length of the fish is what this means. For instance, if an angler catches a walleye, cuts the fillets off of it and retains the carcass, its length doesn’t change and it’s still easily identified as a walleye.
Fortunately, the places I’ve fished in New York have all had convenient fish cleaning stations so I’ve never been tempted to test the regulation. The odd thing to me about New York’s regulations is that anglers are allowed to cut skin-on fillets from cohos, king salmon and brown trout while on board a boat, but not lakers or Atlantics.
Cleaning fish on a boat may or may not be legal, depending on where the activity is taking place.
Question #1: The Minnesota respondent wrote, “Yes, it’s legal to clean fish on boats while underway or moored in some situations, depending on the species. Species with a length limit must remain intact and measurable to ensure compliance with length limits. On MN waters of Lake Superior, the only species of normally targeted game fish without a length limit is the lake trout, which can be filleted before transport. While salmon do have a very small minimum length requirement for possession (10”), because a length limit exists they need to remain intact and measurable. Walleye have a minimum length of 15” for possession, and therefore must also remain intact and measurable.”
Evidently, to Minnesota rule makers, “intact and measurable” must go together. I’ve measured both walleye and salmon—both before and after cutting fillets from the fish. Filleting didn’t change the fish’s length. A measured 20-inch walleye remained exactly 20 inches and slabbing the fillets off a salmon didn’t change its length (longer or shorter) either. Still, in MN, to me, anyway, intact means no cuts.
Question #1: The answer in PA is also “it depends.” They reported, “It is legal to remove the entrails from a fish while aboard a boat, but it is illegal to dump the entrails into the water. The fish cannot be fully processed until it is at its final place of consumption (the angler’s home) or at an officially recognized fish cleaning station.”
What’s an “officially recognized fish cleaning station?” This wasn’t explained, other than evidently some must be commercial fish cleaners because the respondent said, “They will get an official receipt from that cleaning station.” Licensed charter operators are also “officially recognized” in that they can clean their client’s catch. The respondent also wrote, “There are some officially recognized fish cleaning stations along Lake Erie that are open to anglers to clean their own fish”—no mention if a DIYer has to issue himself a receipt.
Question #1: Illinois—Remember, IL was the state that didn’t respond to my questions about cleaning fish so I only used the information available in the current, publicly available, Illinois Fishing Guide. Here’s the text: “No fish species may be dressed (filleted or head and tail removed) on any waters to which length and harvest limits are applicable.” Though it reads as though certain Illinois waters have length or harvest limits, I assume the regs-writers meant fish with length or harvest limits. I also assume “on any waters” means “while on a boat”—so don’t clean and trout, salmon, perch, bass or other fish with bag or size limits until you leave the boat when you are in Illinois.
Question #1: In Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ontario there is no restriction about where fish can be cleaned. Cut them up on board a boat, whether it’s moored or underway, at furnished fish cleaning house, your house or on the tail-gate of a truck. In Indiana, when cleaning a fish on a boat, the carcasses must remain intact. In Michigan, I think it’s the same, the exact wording is “It’s unlawful to mutilate a fish so it’s unidentifiable or cannot be measured.”
An ironing board makes a good fish cleaning table when other facilities are lacking.
QUESTION #2 – THE OFFAL
For clarification, entrails are gills and guts, only. Offal includes entrails and any of the rest of the fish that’s regarded as non-consumable and ultimately discarded during the cleaning process.
Since cutting any fish is illegal on a boat in Ohio, disposing of offal wasn’t addressed by their respondent, nor could I find any mention of it in their online fishing guide. All of the other Great Lakes jurisdictions do have rules regarding the disposal of entrails and/or offal in their fishing regulations, but the regs aren’t all alike.
In Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan the regulations disallow disposing of fish offal in the water, period—regardless of where the fish was cleaned. In Wisconsin (only in Lakes Michigan and Superior) fish entrails (not carcasses) may be disposed of overboard provided the boat is more than a half mile offshore.
In New York, I couldn’t find anything about disposing of legally removed fish entrails, but there is a provision that says carcasses and parts resulting from the “the incidental cleaning of fish for consumption” may be disposed of in the lake as long as they are dumped more than 100 feet offshore or 100 feet from a public launch site or dock. Your guess is as good as mine about what incidental cleaning means or how long after incidentally cleaning a fish it needs to be consumed.
Last but not least, especially when it comes to confusing regulations about fish offal is Ontario. Subject to other rules, it’s not illegal to dispose of offal into the water as long as it’s offshore of the low water mark on the beach or shoreline. Additionally, the Ontario official respondent mentioned “the gas bladders should be punctured to ensure the fish remains sink immediately” and the “remains should be disposed of far enough offshore that they do not wash up on someone’s beach or water-front.”
QUESTION #3 - Other Applicable Rules
Once the fish are cleaned and the offal disposed of properly, it’s time to package the fish for transport. In Ontario the respondent reported a fish cleaner needs to leave "a large patch of skin on all fish fillets for identification purposes.” In Minnesota, a minimum 1” square patch of skin on each fillet is required and “fish must be packaged in a way that they remain identifiable and countable (ie, lumped into a milk carton or a round wad in a Ziploc bag is prohibited).” In Pennsylvania, the requirement is a 2-inch patch of skin.
In Wisconsin, a fish with a size limit can be cleaned, but the length of the fillet—or the if the head and/or tail is cut off—the length of the fillet or the head-less/tailless fish must meet or exceed the size limit—at least until the fish is at the angler’s home. Additionally, only “skin-on” fillets are allowed.
In other jurisdictions where cleaning on boats is legal, the word, “measurable” is often included for fish with size limits.
Since I often fish in Indiana and often clean the fish on board my boat, I remain in compliance with the disposal laws by depositing the offal in a bucket or buckets for on-land disposal. If an officer wants to measure my fish, they just measure the carcass.
MY SYNOPSIS
If you are a lawyer or just concerned that you know the exact “letter of the law” regarding the fishing regulations, look up the statutes or codes for the jurisdiction where you are fishing. Easier is to obtain or look online for the Fishing Regulation Booklets for where you plan to fish, but remember they are only a synopsis and may not include the exact wording or be totally inclusive. This article is my own synopsis based on looking up codes, statutes, online regulations and interviews with individuals from various jurisdictions. I strived to be correct, but I’m not a lawyer.
Remember, too, there may be local ordinances, or even marina policies regarding fish cleaning activities or offal disposal to follow. Most of the regulations and policies are just plain common sense. A few are non-sense. None are worth the hassle or fine for ignoring.
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